its British roots. “I see you’ve all gathered as I requested. But we’re missing one.”
She turned toward me, expression still intense but not hostile. “Where’s your familiar, Miss Shimmer?”
I felt a sudden urge to curtsy; instead I did an awkward little head bob. “He’s too big to fit in the house. Ma’am.”
“Ah.” She leaned forward slightly. “I do realize that there are most certainly some trust issues on your side as well as on mine, but there are serious issues at hand that we had best discuss in person, and in private. So I have arranged for us to meet tomorrow afternoon on neutral ground: the Seelie Tavern west of Winesburg.”
My heart beat a little faster; I’d always heard that there was a faery realm hidden near Amish country, but you couldn’t find it unless you were invited. I’d heard all kinds of stories about the hazards mortals face when visiting Faery: those deemed graceless transformed into pigs, those found cocky turned to mice for the cats, those seen as too pretty lulled into spending the night and emerging the next morning to discover that they’d disappeared for a century and aged almost as much. Too quiet and you might become a tree, too loud and you might become a crow. What were we getting into?
“Please be there promptly at four; I will send another courier with a faery token so the guards will let y’all in. They will be able to accommodate your familiar, I’m sure,” Riviera continued. “But to avoid offending our hosts—and the most serious consequences that y’all might suffer—please be on your best behavior, and dress properly. Old-world formal will do. I expect it will take you perhaps two hours to reach the tavern. So until one-thirty tomorrow, you may travel freely within Franklin County, provided it’s by mundane means. After that, you’ll be safe as long as you’re on the highways traveling in the right direction. If you leave the county, or if you use any form of teleportation, our truce is off and I’ll have to have y’all taken into custody and remanded to the Virtus Regnum.
“Do y’all have any questions about these arrangements?” she finished.
“No, ma’am,” we all said.
“Good,” she said. “I look forward to seeing y’all tomorrow.”
And with that, the mirror shimmered and fell back to reflecting our worried faces.
“Dude.” Cooper broke the silence. “Did we just have a meeting about having a meeting?”
“We sure did,” the Warlock replied. “Welcome to Bureaucratica. Population: us.”
Pal met me on the patio. “What did she say?”
“We’re all meeting her tomorrow at four at the Seelie Tavern up near Winesburg.”
“Oh dear,” he replied. “That seems a somewhat perilous venue. Why Faery?”
I shrugged. “She said we should meet on neutral territory.”
“But there are surely faery enclaves within this city—why not meet at one of them?”
“I’m guessing the idea is that we meet on neutral territory that’s also out in the middle of nowhere,” I replied. “And considering the mess Cooper and I accidentally created downtown, well, keeping us away from large, expensive buildings would seem prudent to her, wouldn’t it? I’m trying real hard not to imagine that there’s a more sinister intent here.”
A sudden chill breeze ruffled my hair and a voice whispered, “Look skyward, my girl.”
“What?” I looked around, looked up.
A small object was plummeting down from the clear blue sky. I stepped aside, and it hit the grass near me, bounced twice, and came to a rest. It was an old brown teddy bear; a small cream-colored card was tied to its middle with a piece of kite string. I hesitated, then picked up the bear. Something about it was familiar; I sniffed it, and immediately remembered playing with the bear in my old room in our Lakewood house. The memory strengthened; it was one of several stuffed toys I’d had since I was a baby, but my stepmother, Deb, deemed it junk and sent it off to Goodwill before our move to Plano.
Hands shaking a bit, I untied the kite string and unfolded the card. In it was a lock of copper-brown hair and on it a handwritten note:
I’ve missed you very much. We need to talk.
—Your dad
“What’s that?” Pal asked.
I resisted my sudden, irrational instinct to hide the card and lie; if I betrayed Pal’s trust, it might be a long time before I got it back.
“It’s a pointer,” I replied. “From my father, or so it says.”
“Your father?” Pal blinked in surprise. “But the prison records indicated that he was, well